women in science
sciencewoman | February 19, 2009Dr. Ashanti Pyrtle is an assistant professor in the College of Marine Science at the University of South Florida. She's a chemical oceanographer who studies the fate, transport and retention of radionuclides in aquatic ecosystems. Her PhD work investigated the marine distribution of radioisotopes from the Chernobyl accident, and she's currently doing work in Puerto Rico, off the Florida coast, and in the Savannah River. She's one of the first female African-American chemical oceanographers, and the first African-American to earn an oceanography Ph.D. from Texas A&M University.
Dr. Pyrtle…
cmooney | February 10, 2009
Male chauvinist pig? Or worse?
I haven't even read Copernicus yet, and probably won't at least until this weekend. As far as my reading goes, the scientific revolution hasn't yet started and I'm still stuck with Ptolemaic glasses on.
History 293, though, is churning away, and yesterday we did our section on Francis Bacon and The New Atlantis. (Not satisfied with the course packet excerpt, this is the version I ordered from Amazon.) Man, here was a dude who, although writing in the early 1600s, sounds stunningly "modern"--a term I must now put in quotes due to the fact that I'm studying…
sciencewoman | February 5, 2009Another duplicate Seed magazine has arrived in my mailbox, and just in time another great Scientiae has been posted. Be the first one to identify the authors of the following three quotes in the comments, and I'll send along the Universe in 2009 issue of Seed.
It's another cool issue focusing on the all awesome innovations waiting on our scientific horizon. So far, I've particularly enjoyed the feature article on the "ecology of finance" and the Seed Salon where a physicist and a social scientist discuss how networks are becoming a dominant paradigm for investigating all sorts of phenomena.…
cmooney | February 3, 2009If the president is going to restore science to its "rightful place," he's going to have to do something serious about the Food and Drug Administration. Not only was it the site of many Bush-era science related scandals, over matters like the over-the-counter availability of emergency contraception, but it has also broken down repeatedly on the job. The most recent screwup involves peanut butter, but my God, how many others have there been? Remember Vioxx?
The president says he's going to be conducting "a complete review of FDA operations." Good. Moreover, the naming of a new commissioner is…
sciencewoman | February 2, 2009The powers that be have declared this the third annual Blogroll Amnesty Day. According to those powers, we are supposed to be celebrate by linking to five lesser-known bloggers, and reiterating our liberal blogroll policy.
First the blogs you should be reading...hard choices here, but I'm going to go with these:
The Alternative Scientist - a group blog on alternative science careers
Life as I know it... - a new blog by thoughtful commenter Jenn PhD
I love science, really - by the wonderful Mrs. Whatsit
Mrs. Comet Hunter - if great bands can self-title albums, why not bloggers?
Chick with…
sciencewoman | February 2, 2009The February Scientiae is up at Fairer Science. Pat picked a great theme for this month's carnival "Our Dreams for a Better World." Go check out all the great ideas and then let's get to work turning them into reality.
And now for an exciting announcement, DNLee of Urban Science Adventures is kicking off a new monthly carnival focused on Diversity in Science.
Blogs of every genre are invited to write a special feature post about a person who is a pioneer and/or innovator in any of the amazing fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM).
Tell us all about him/her?
How…
sheril | January 23, 2009Science bloggers are still abuzz over Wednesday's discussion of women in academia and now Razib (one of my very favorite sciblings) has taken the topic one step further. He collected data on the mean number of hours worked last week broken down by sex and compared that with the number of children per individual. I always enjoy reading Razib's amusing analyses (and justified reason to link great flicks from the 80s):
As you can see, the more children women have, the fewer hours they
worked last week (on average). Women are primary care givers, no
surprise. On the other hand, you can see a…
sheril | January 22, 2009
My post yesterday on women in the academic workforce not only sparked some great comments, but also several interesting emails. One in particular got me thinking and with the author's permission, I have decided to pose his concern to readers:
Sheril,
Your piece this morning is closely related to my current situation and I'm not sure how to navigate these waters. I am a 3rd year PhD student in fisheries science at a public university in New England, the lone male in our cohort and very sensitive to the challenges facing women in academia through the awesome women sharing my office. None of…
sheril | January 21, 2009As Natalie Angier rightly points out, women are making tremendous strides in science and engineering earning 40 percent of U.S. doctorates in 2006 (up from eight percent 50 years ago). But we've still got a long way to go in terms of leveling the playing field after graduation.
Angier references a recent survey of 160,000 Ph.D. recipients that found 70 percent of male tenured professors were married with children while only 44 percent of their female counterparts were. Further, twelve years or more after receiving doctorates, tenured women were more than "twice as likely as tenured men to be…
sciencewoman | January 20, 2009Sciencewoman says: Some of readers have been wondering about what life is like for those jobs at primarily undergraduate institutions (PUIs). Alice and I are indubitably unqualified to answer that question, so Kim Hannula of "All of my faults are stress related..." graciously offered to provide some perspective. Kim is an incredibly thoughtful blogger about teaching and about geology, so you should all be reading her.
In the comments on Alice's post about grad students and balanced careers, there was some discussion about working at a primarily undergraduate institution, and questions about…
sciencewoman | January 17, 2009Gender and science session - Alice, Zuska, and Abel
Non-chronological note-taking from a great session.
What is an ally? How do you become an ally?
You can be an ally for any oppressed group. (http://partnersinchange.umich.edu/page1_2.html)
Be an ally all the time, not just in front of the person to whom you are allied. (Zuska)
There is point of no return. A crystallizing experience, that crosses a threshold, where they can't go back to not caring. But you can't tell (from looking or listening) who has crossed the threshold and whether you can count on them all the time. (Janet)
Being an…
sciencewoman | January 16, 2009
I'm sitting at the edge of the auditorium at the Sigma Xi Center, comfortably sandwiched between Scicurious and Christina Pikas. I'm listening to Rebecca Skloot describe how a creative writing class assignment to write about a place and her response about the freezer in the Colorado State University Veterinary School morgue launched her on a career in science writing. Now, she's introducing the main topic of her talk (as well as the topic of her new book) "The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks" And we're getting to hear world-premiere excerpts from the book to be published next year.
Skloot'…
sciencewoman | December 29, 2008This news is a bit old, but I'm still excited about, so I thought I'd share with others who may not have heard. Jane Lubchenco, an honest-to-goodness-working-mommy-scientist, is going to be the nominee for the next head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). NOAA is the uber-agency for the National Weather Service and National Marine Fisheries Service among other agencies. Long-time careful readers will know that Lubchenco is one of my favorite women scientists.
Lubchenco is the former president of AAAS, a professor at Oregon State University, and a marine ecologist,…
sheril | December 29, 2008Every week or so, someone asks yours truly to weigh in on women in science. I have. Including a couple of times here. But like Britney's career, the subject keeps making a comeback...
How do we break through that glass ceiling, defy expectations, and succeed in a man's world?
Now more than ever, it seems that science bloggers everywhere are exploring feminist philosophy and the gender divide. And so ladies and gents, what do you think it means to be a woman in science and when is femininity alright in the lab? Most recently, there's been discussion of whether we (science blogettes)…
sciencewoman | December 4, 2008For those of you who liked my footwear selection, you may be interested in knowing about Red Ants Pants. They claim to be "the first ever company dedicated to manufacturing workwear for women" and it is a small woman owned and operated business in Montana. The pants are not cheap, but they are durable and they offer both a straight and curvy cut. The next time I'm off on a major field adventure, I might give these pants a try.
h/t ScienceBrother, but ScienceGrandma points out that Carhartt also makes a line of women's clothing.
sciencewoman | December 1, 2008I'm no longer the most junior member of the department, so I'm not quite as sheltered from service obligations as I was last year. That means that when a faculty position opened up unexpectedly, I got tapped to serve on the search committee. As the woman on the committee, I'm finding myself tasked with making sure that we have a diverse applicant pool. I'm glad that our university is genuine about their support for diversity (at least in applicant pools), and I'm happy to do what I can to make sure this pool is diverse, but ... no one has told me how to go about doing so.
So far, the things…
sheril | November 18, 2008The past week has seen a mild ripple across the science blogosphere over women in science. I've refrained from participating this round while Chris and I are hard at work completing our manuscript. But today while I'm presently somewhere miles up between coasts, I've scheduled this entry to point readers over to a great response to all the hullabaloo by Blue Lab Coats:
You see- the struggle I'm in daily in my own life and career is not about appearances, and it is not about symbolism or femininity- and it is not about who I am as a person, my likes and dislikes etc. It is a struggle to be…
sciencewoman | November 17, 2008Open Lab 2008 is a printed anthology of the best science blogging of the year. We're now only two weeks from the deadline (December 1) for nominating posts for inclusion in this year's anthology. The fifty best posts, plus one poem and one cartoon, will be chosen by a panel of judges, and the winners will be printed in a book published by Lulu.com. That's right, time spent frittered away on blogging could earn you the right to (truthfully) say "I'm a published author." As usual, Bora's got all the details.
Open Lab is now in it's third year, and the last two years had wonderful writing about…
sciencewoman | November 13, 2008The University of Washington's ADVANCE Center for Institutional Change
received an award this year from the National Science Foundation
ADVANCE program to hold professional development workshops for
Ph.D.-level women in industry, research labs, consulting, or national
labs who are interested in transitioning to academic careers in STEM.
The first workshop will be held October 19 and 20, 2009.
This workshop will be very helpful to women interested in making the
transition to academia. The workshop speakers will primarily be
successful women faculty members who began their post-Ph.D. careers…
sciencewoman | November 6, 2008I still get a little chill down my spine when the news announcers say "President-elect Obama," but already I am being reminded that we can't just sit back and wait for him to save the world. We still need to do our part, and one of the things we need to do right now is be vigilant to make sure that the most competent people are running the bureaucratic machinery of the country.
So I was very pleased when a list-serv to which I belong circulated an email from a major research organization saying that they were being contacted by the Obama transition team and asked for nominations of people…